Trinamool accuses BJP of ‘enabling’ violence against Bengali-speaking people in Odisha’s Malkangiri

The Trinamool Congress has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Odisha government of ‘watching and enabling a State-engineered ethnic purge’ in Odisha’s Malkangiri MV-26 village, where violence erupted between the tribal and the Bengali-speaking populations after a tribal woman’s headless body was recovered from a river. 

On Sunday afternoon (December 8, 2025), a large mob of thousands of tribal people from Rakhelguda village allegedly charged into the Malkangiri MV-26 village with traditional weapons and torched several houses. Over 100 families residing in the village were affected in the attack as per reports.

The Trinamool Congress in a social media post on Thursday accused the BJP of “making its contempt for Bengalis a core ideological principle” and the Mohan Majhi government of abdicating its constitutional duty when the violence erupted. 

“BJP has been conditioning people to treat Bengalis as outsiders, infiltrators, and enemies. MV-26 is simply the grotesque outcome of that poisonous indoctrination. When you reduce an entire community to a stereotype, violence becomes a policy outcome,” the Trinamool alleged in a post on X. 

For context, over 200 villages had been set up in Malkangiri and Nabarangpur districts in the late 1950s as part of the Union government’s rehabilitation plan in Dandakaranya region for Bengali Hindu immigrants who were entering India from erstwhile East Pakistan. The Dandakaranya region spans forested areas in Chattisgarh (erstwhile Madhya Pradesh) and Odisha.

“BJP is responsible for fuelling anti-Bengali sentiments across India. Even in Odisha, the hostility meted out towards Bengali speakers now was not prevalent till one and half years back. But the Bangla-birodhi (anti-Bengali), Bangla-bidweshi (contemptuous towards Bengalis) BJP has completely changed that. There are false narratives that West Bengal has evicted migrants from Odisha, but in reality, anyone staying illegally on government land irrespective of their ethnic identity are being removed,” Trinamool spokesperson Arup Chakraborty told The Hindu.

This development assumes significance because leaders of the Trinamool Congress including West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have protested the assault, detention, and linguistic profiling of Bengali-speaking migrants in BJP-ruled States earlier this year and have accused BJP of being Bangla-birodhi (anti-Bengali). In Odisha alone, over 400 migrant workers were detained by Jharsugda Police on suspicions of being illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in July this year.